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On the 12th anniversary of the 2011 Roboski massacre, the families who gathered to commemorate the 34 Kurdish civilians killed in a Turkish military airstrike are still demanding accountability for the killings, the perpetrators of which have not been disclosed by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government.
The incident, commonly known as the Roboski massacre, refers to the killing of 34 male Kurdish civilians, most of them teenagers, on December 28, 2011, when military jets bombed them after receiving intelligence on militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the Uludere district of Şırnak province near the Turkish–Iraqi border.
#roboskî massacre happened today in 2011. 34 border traders, 19 of them underaged, bombed to death by the turkish army. no justice has been done. https://t.co/dVw3k1N9Da
— Frederike Geerdink (@fgeerdink) December 28, 2023
Representatives of various political parties and civil society organizations attended a ceremony at the gravesite of the victims along with their families, who carried photos of their loved ones. Among those present were leading representatives of the pro-Kurdish Equality and Democracy Party (DEM), the Democratic Regions Party (DBP) and human rights activists.
Tülay Hatimoğulları, co-chair of the DEM party, linked the incident to the general regional conflicts and the ongoing hostilities against the Kurds. In her speech she emphasized that the rights of Kurds are systematically disregarded and that legal institutions are unable to adequately address their grievances.
The legal efforts to obtain justice have faced many challenges. The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) rejected the families’ application in 2018 on the grounds that domestic legal remedies had not been exhausted. Subsequent appeals to the Turkish Constitutional Court (AYM) were met with bureaucratic and legal obstacles, which exacerbated the families’ sense of injustice.
Despite the Turkish government’s offer of compensation in 2012, the families have largely rejected financial compensation in favor of a transparent judicial process.
While the Kurds commemorated the victims of the massacre, hateful social media posts by Dr. Tuba Işık, an academic at Ağrı İbrahim Çeçen University, sparked a negative public reaction.
Işık posted inflammatory comments on a photo taken during the funeral of the Roboski massacre victims, writing: “The picture is very beautiful, may it be forever.”
This statement, which was widely condemned as racist and anti-Kurdish, caused great public outrage.
Although Işık has made such statements and aggressive messages against the Kurds in the past, the university was content to state that the academic does not hold an administrative post and did not take any action against her.
The pursuit of justice has been a long and arduous journey for the Roboski families and reflects the general struggle of Kurds for recognition and rights in Turkey.
The families’ lawyers recently filed a new case with the Constitutional Court and claim to have new evidence. This includes statements by former finance minister Berat Albayrak, who blames the Gülen movement, a faith-based group outlawed by Ankara, for the Roboski massacre.
Questions have also been raised about the impartiality of the military prosecutors and judges involved in previous decisions.
The families of the Roboski victims are expecting a decision from the court in 2024.
